GUEST ARTICLE - Andrew Steggles

Making the Most of Your Online Forums 

By now, most people are familiar with what listserves or E-Groups are - software package which serve subscribers with  information by an electronic medium.  Andy Steggles, Chief Information Officer of the Risk and Insurance Management Society, Inc. has spent the last six months re-defining what an e-group can be and how much more effective they can be to a subscription base.

Most users subscribe to e-groups and opt for one of the standard subscription  options:

• No Mail - the user will visit the website to see new messages, but they don't want to receive  e-mail;

• Realtime - the user will receive e-mail, as and when it is posted to the group;

• Daily Digest - typically available in a plain text or MIME format only.  The digest lists all of  the messages which have been posted that day, into a nice, but simple, plain text e-mail.

All of these options have limitations:

• The 'No Mail' option is problematic because you need  to rely on the subscriber to remember and make the  effort to visit the website to view the postings. 

• The 'Real Time' option is good for small, casual lists.  However, subscribers can be totally  overwhelmed if the list grows and therefore the number of postings increases. 

• The 'Daily Digest' option is the most popular subscription choice.  The down side is the one day delay in receiving responses.

Creating your first lists

When implementing your e-group solution, it is important to consider which demographics you would like to capture and tie into.  Most organizations already have a standard set of demographics for their members and non-members. 

RIMS created the industry and interest groups based on a mixture of our membership SIC codes, conference industry sessions, buyer's guide categories and speaker bureau options.  The final e-group selections were hand picked by staff with advice from members.  There was some overlap, but only where necessary, for example:  A RIMS member who specializes in Claims Management for a Casino, would be subscribed to two groups:

• Claims Management - everyone interested in Claims Management, but not restricted by a specific industry.

• Entertainment – every type of risk manager within the Entertainment industry, but not necessarily claims management specialists.

Launching your lists

RIMS subscribed all members to their relevant e-groups, very few members complained when they received their welcome e-mail to their respective e-groups. 

When launching the e-groups, RIMS auto-subscribed our membership (based on their existing demographics) to their respective e-groups.  We then sent an e-mail to each person, explaining about this new member benefit and how they can expect no more than one e-mail per day from any specific e-group.  On the administration side, each list had been setup as a moderated list, so we could ensure the quality of postings.  As expected, there were a number of postings requesting to be unsubscribed (even though, the instructions of how to do this were in the e-mail).  After a couple of weeks, we changed all the industry lists to non-moderated and have since had very few problems with them. 

Due to the higher number of subscribers to the interest e-groups, they continue to be moderated - whenever a message is posted, an e-mail is generated to the webmaster e-mail account, prompting someone to moderate the message.  Typically the e-groups are checked about 4 times per day, which takes about 5 minutes each time.

Post launch measurements

There is a common misconception among e-group administrators: The number of messages posted to an e-group  is a direct measurement of success.  While it is true this is a contributing factor, it is not the only factor. The sample demographics below which are based on a real e-group show not just the number of messages posted, but over what period of days and by how many different people.  After all, if one person posts half of the questions, then your list might not be as successful as you first thought.

When looking at these demographics, you can also calculate approximately how many e-mails have been generated during a given period of time.  For example, the list results above demonstrate how 5,200 messages have been posted to the list since the beginning of the year.  This has resulted in over 2,295,000 e-mails - one e-mail for each of the 135 days where at least one message was posted and a digest was then sent to (over) 17,000 subscribers by an average of 877 unique posters per month.

When measuring the different mediums of communication i.e. listserves vs. chapter meetings (asynchronous vs. synchronous) the results are impressive.  For example, an organization might have 50 chapters which average 1 meeting per month.  Let's assume there are 50 attendees at each meeting and the average attendee manages to interact with 20 other attendees during each meeting.  This equates to: 50 chapters * 5 months = 250 Meetings and 50 attendees * 20 interactions = 1000 total interactions (per meeting).  The result would be 250 Meetings * 1000 interactions = 250,000 interactions. When comparing against the 2,300,000 (rounded) e-mail interactions generated from your listserve, you'll see that your membership is between 4 or 5 times more active in the same five month period.

While it is commonly accepted that asynchronous networking is not nearly as effective as synchronous networking, it can be used to show how much more effective an association can become. 

Marketing

The good news is that marketing listserves to existing subscribers (to remind them about the  service) is relatively simple.  The key is to ensure that at least 1 or 2 e-mails per month are  sent to the list and not by the same people each month.  This is just the right amount to remind  members that this service is here for them to utilize.  How effective is your  subscriber marketing? ask yourself this... or more importantly, ask your members in the next member  needs survey you conduct: If you have a industry specific question where can you turn to for help?   If your members instinctively know to turn to your association's e-group, then you're on the right track.

There is also a great opportunity for cross-marketing.  For example, each week our website automatically sends our largest e-group a message from the job bank, outlining the job titles, states and date posted of all the jobs in the job bank, together with instructions for members to view the jobs or for non-members to subscribe to the job bank.  Since RIMS adopted this cross marketing initiative, the number of jobs posted at anyone time has increased by an average of 50 per month to 70 per month.  The cross marketing opportunities has also increased our professional development course registrations.

Making your e-group better - must have and nice to have

RIMS has sought feedback on numerous occasions from its members to determine what works and what doesn't with our e-group solution.  The initial feedback from members concentrated on the format of the service.  The off the shelf plain text digest was not meeting expectations.  After brainstorming various solutions, it was determined that we needed to create a new subscription option in the form of a "HTML Digest". 

• HTML Format

This format allows the message to be styled however we wish.  For example, rather than the user seeing 20 or 30 subject lines at the beginning of the e-mail, then they have to weed though the digest until they find the one they are looking for, they could simply click on the subject line which would scroll them down to the respective message.  The new format started as a very basic concept with nice, but simple functionality and was very well received.  We did find problems with Lotus Notes users whose e-mail client was not fully HTML compatible as well as companies with extremely tight security controls (some companies would not allow web formatted e-mails to be displayed).  This accounted for about 3% of the entire membership.

• Printable version

The next common request was for members to be able to print selected messages without having to print the whole digest.  Many members wanted to forward just one message to a peer.  Both of these things were no more difficult with the new format than the old, but expectations had been raised and RIMS had a duty to respond.  Fortunately the new HTML format allowed for all these requests to be catered for.  A "Custom Digest" option was built which allowed members to check a box next to all the subject lines they wanted to print or e-mail, edit the result (which was turned into a plain text format) and then print or e-mail. 

These two features were just the start of a 6 month journey, which tailored and customized this highly visible medium to our member needs.  Many other additional features were added, such as:

• Hold All Messages - When a user goes on vacation, they simply enter the dates and we stop sending e-mail.  The day before we return, we send one e-mail with all of their missed messages.

• Subscribe a Friend - Many of our members use this feature to subscribe their co-workers.  This works well with discount codes, allowing free subscription in a given period of time.

• Simple Searches (pre-written reports) - Many members who go to our website simple wish to see "all messages posted in the last 24 hours, 7 days or 30 days" we have links to all these reports, plus a few others.

• Author's Messages - Users often wish to see any other messages a specific author has posted.  By clicking on this link, we'll find them for you.

• Anonymous Postings - Post messages or responses through the website anonymously.  RIMS tracks exactly who has sent what (even if it an anonymous message) to ensure the function is not abused.

Unintended Benefits of the new format

When desiging the new format, we also managed to tackle the problem of subscribers posting messages and leaving all of the existing digest text in the e-mail.  This would result in the following day’s digest containing all the previous days digest and more.  The new format allowed for a “Reply to Sender” and a “Reply to E-Group” link to be placed in the e-mail to the left of each message within the digest.  When a user clicks on either of these links, they are automatically logged into the rims.org website (using an encrypted login), where we automatically strip out all the unnecessary text and insert a standardized signature, which contains their job title and company name.  We also no longer show the sender’s e-mail address, which forces anyone wishing to contact him/her off line, to click on one of the links to do so.  This means that we can now track all the member-to-member (off line activity) as well as the number of messages posted to the e-groups. On average, for each message posted to the e-group, there are approx 20 sent directly to the sender!  We also record how many times a message has been forwarded or a custom digest has been generated etc.  These demographics have opened the e-groups up to a new sponsorship opportunity.

Sponsorship Opportunities

The HTML format of the digest allows for a "Sponsorship Message" at the top of the daily e-mail, just above the list of subject lines.  The sponsor is allows a 35 word description, web address, e-mail address and a 120 x 120 pixel .gif or .jpg graphic.  We also display the same (or optionally different) message and graphic to the left of each and every message contained within the e-mail.  The demographic results are impressive.  For example:

• A daily digest with 20 messages would contain a graphic to the left of all 20 messages, plus a graphic at the top of each message.  This means that when one person opens the message, the graphic will receive 21 impressions.  Multiply this by the number of recipients (17,000 for the largest list) and there 1 days sponsorship will have received 3,570,000 impressions to a very targeted audience.

The sponsorship module has been designed in such a way that anyone can sponsor any e-group.  The price is calculated by the number of "current" subscribers (this may be slightly different during the dates when their message is posted).  If they sponsor an e-group for 1 to 7 days, we charge 10 cents per e-mail, 8 to 30 days, 8 cents per e-mail and 30+ days, 6 cents per e-mail.  The opportunity for revenue generation can be large and small.  If someone sponsors the aviation e-group, with 340 subscribers, for a 5 day period the cost would be: 340 * 10 cents, multiplied by 5 days = $170.  However, for the Risk Professionals e-group the reward is much greater: 17,000 subscribers * 10 cents, multiplied by 5 days = $8,500. 

So far we've found most interest in this new medium from advertisers which require a quick response.  For example, we've had a number of companies sponsor the e-groups who are surveying risk managers for a potential new product.  The results for the advertiser have been most impressive if they offer an incentive to the participants, or perhaps the chance to win something.  Either way, the new format has created a tremendous opportunity with little or no transaction cost (everything is automated).  Interestingly, when there is no sponsor for any of the e-groups, we define a "Default" sponsor, where RIMS advertises its own products or member services. 

We have found most interest in the e-group sponsorships from the larger companies which have many products.  As one of our premium partners said "I like this medium as it offers the perfect solution to concentrate more on product awareness than company awareness.  Everyone in the industry knows who we are, but we need to draw attention to what we do and the services we offer.  The web-based system allows us to build an on-line advertising campaign which rotates among our core products, delivering a different message to the user every day."

The next steps? the future?

RIMS has done a good job responding to member requests and feedback.  We are now looking to be even more proactive by involving both members and staff in brain-storming sessions to think of ideas which will make this medium even more powerful and effective than it already is.  How this will evolve is unclear at the moment, but if the current feedback is anything to go by, our members will love it.

Andrew Steggles is Chief Information Officer of the Risk and Insurance Management Society, Inc. (RIMS).

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